ACT Center of Indiana

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Breathe in the VA

Research Type

Collaborators

Angela Rollins, PhD

Michelle Salyers, PhD

Louanne Davis, PsyD

Marina Kukla, PhD

Alissa Russ, PhD

Linda Collins, Program Manager

Amethyst Green, Research Assistant

Kathy Snow, Data Manager

Background

We will recruit 180 mental health staff and randomize participants to intervention or control group and conduct follow-up online surveys at baseline, 6 weeks post-training day, and 6-months post-training day. We will randomly select 40 participants for individual qualitative interviews to explore their lived experience of burnout and work engagement, as well as organizational factors, job demands, and job resources that might promote or reduce burnout. We will also work with experts on organizational interventions to help us evaluate our qualitative themes related to organizational contexts.

Objectives

The purpose of this research study is to rigorously test the impact of the BREATHE intervention in a randomized design and determine longer-term effects of the training, to examine the organizational contextual factors increasing or reducing burnout, and to design an overarching intervention framework for the implementation of BREATHE that includes organizational factors.

Methodology

We will use a stratified randomized design. Participants will be randomized within each facility to receive the BREATHE workshop or the control workshop. The control condition will allow us to gather data on an active group, a more rigorous test of our intervention. Data collection procedures will include a web-based survey, administered at 3 time periods: Time 1 (baseline prior to any workshop, as people agree to and enroll in the study), Time 2 (6 weeks after the workshops are completed), and Time 3 (6 months post workshop follow-up). Actual turnover data will be obtained from site leadership for all participants in the study. For organizational contextual data, we will use open-ended questions collected in the web-based survey from all participants, and will also include collection of more in-depth qualitative interviews of a subsample of participants in the intervention and control groups. The subsample of participants recruited for the in-depth qualitative interviews will also be asked to provide a copy of actual leave time from the Decentralized Hospital Computer Program (DHCP) for the 6 month period following the workshop. Non-VA participants will be asked to provide equivalent documentation of leave time.

Impact

This project will improve the technical capabilities of the field by providing an intervention program for mental health providers in the VA and elsewhere. At the same time, we will increase scientific knowledge about effective approaches for reducing mental health provider burnout. Reducing burnout and turnover also offers the possibility of improving the quality of care, including the fidelity of evidence-based practices and the continuity of important therapeutic relationships which ultimately impact consumer outcomes. This project represents a unique opportunity for the VA to have a hand in the development of a multi-level burnout intervention strategy that could be helpful in reducing burnout and improving other organizational and patient-level outcomes in the national VA healthcare system.